“I used to hear all these great stories from the men in the Falcon Guard,” Jaryd muttered. “Stories of Goeren-yai heroism. Now I arrive here, I find they're all cowards.”
“I'd think twice before using that word around here.” Andreyis said warily.
“What else would you call a people who dissuaded me from taking revenge against those who murdered my eleven-year-old brother!” Jaryd shouted.
“Your honour is your own,” Andreyis said. “What you choose to do with it is your concern. No man in Baerlyn will stop you should you choose to continue this path. But neither will we assist or approve if you give us no cause to.”
“Listen to your friends, Jaryd,” Aeryl pleaded. “They're young, but they speak with great wisdom.”
“Growing up in Kessligh's shadow will do that,” said Andreyis. Lynette rolled her eyes a little. Now that Andreyis was a warrior, blooded in battle and successful in his Wakening, she thought him far too big for his boots.
“Jaryd,” Aeryl tried once more, “Great Lord Arastyn does not want your head. He's willing to grant you a pardon, if only-”
“The only reason he no longer wants my head is that he's not entitled under the king's law to punish a Goeren-yai who has in turn challenged him to a duel,” Jaryd snarled. “My challenge stands, and so long as it stands, his claim and my claim cancel each other. It shall stand until either he accepts, or one of us dies.”
“For you to challenge a Verenthane great lord to a duel will require a lord of similar stature to endorse your challenge!” exclaimed Aeryl. “Not just anyone can challenge a great lord, Jaryd, and you might not have noticed, but you're no longer the heir to Tyree!”
“I noticed. My brother died in a pool of blood that made me notice. Princess Sashandra will support my claim.”
“Aye, no doubt she would, but she's not here, is she?”
“So will Kessligh Cronenverdt,” Jaryd said stubbornly, although he felt less certain of that.
“And he's not here either. Very good, Jaryd, you've named two people who can't possibly speak on your behalf…and Kessligh, although a very heroic figure, has no actual noble pedigree whatsoever, and is in fact well known to be in opposition to the very concept.”
Prince Damon, Jaryd nearly said, but didn't. Prince Damon was in trouble enough, being perceived to have had some sympathy with the rebellion led by his sister Sashandra. Endorsements from Jaryd Nyvar would do him no favours at all.
“Princess Sofy,” he said, with a glare. “Princess Sofy will support my claim.”
Aeryl blinked. “Princess Sofy? Do you honestly think she would publicly support your right to chop the Great Lord of Tyree into very small pieces?”
“She said she would.” Actually she hadn't. But it had been implicit, he thought.
Aeryl took a deep breath and looked elsewhere for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Well, Princess Sofy is a woman, so I don't know…”
“She's nobility. No, she's far more than nobility, she's royalty. Her claim would stand.”
“She's about to be married to the heir of the Regent of all the Bacosh, Jaryd-”
“And she's not happy about it.” That was common enough knowledge, and Aeryl didn't contradict him. “Or she wasn't. She's suddenly the most important woman in all Lenayin. Maybe even the most important royal. Without her, there's no marriage, no alliance and no war. She can say what she likes, no one will dare touch her.”
“I am quite certain, Jaryd,” Aeryl said with the beginnings of impatience, “that if Princess Sofy were here, she would counsel you against this foolishness, and tell you not to throw your life away so cheaply!”
“It won't be cheap, I can promise you that.”
“Princess Sofy is a kind and gentle woman,” Aeryl persisted, “with no great love of battles and bloodshed. If you think she will support you on this blind insanity of yours, I fear you're deluded.”
“If you're so certain, why don't you ask her?”
Aeryl stared. Jaryd knew he had charged well beyond the bounds of common sense or caution, but he could not stop himself now. Princess Sofy was a kind and gentle woman, but she was also a just one. She had braved the battlefield and comforted the wounded and dying soldiers until she had dropped from exhaustion. Sofy had been appalled at Tarryn's fate, and infuriated by the actions of the Tyree lords, Great Lord Arastyn in particular. Surely she'd not deprive him of his justice.
All the world wanted Jaryd dead. That suited him fine. Just so long as he could take Arastyn and a few of his rotten, scheming friends with him.
Sasha woke the next morning to the sound of the ocean swell against the pier. Sunlight peered through the shutters of her small room.
From the floors below came the sounds of footsteps and muffled voices. More voices on the docks, fishermen greeting the morning. On the roof above, a gull's feet scrabbled. Then a piercing cry. Another gull answered, circling nearby. The creaking of ropes, as boats strained at their moorings. The air smelled of salt, and the skin of her hands was still dry and taut from the previous day's fishing.
Strange sounds, and strange smells. So far from Lenayin. And yet peaceful, in the strange way that dangerous, overcrowded Petrodor could sometimes spring on a person, right when she least expected it. If she relaxed on her back in the warm morning air, and listened to the rise and fall of the ocean, she could just about drift off to sleep once more…
The door creaked open before her eyelids could close entirely. Sasha jerked awake, a hand moving fast to the knife beneath her pillow. But it was only Fara, wrapped in a towel from her morning wash and holding two mugs of tea.
“Thanks,” said Sasha, as the other girl placed the mug on the floor beside the bed. Fara returned to her own bed and began dressing.
Neither being a princess, nor the uma of Kessligh Cronenverdt, had been enough to gain Sasha a room of her own. She didn't mind. She and Fara shared the best upstairs room at the Velos, a crumbling little brick-walled space with floorboards that creaked, and rickety wooden shutters that let in the rain in a storm. At least they had a view of the docks-Liam and Rodery were stuck in the back room with only a dingy courtyard to look upon.
The tea was spiced something fierce. Sasha winced as she sipped it, opening the window shutters enough for a view. Already there were small fishing boats heading out past the large ships at mooring. Men clambered over boats along the piers, tending to ropes, nets and sails. The sun glared several hands above the ocean horizon…someone had been nice to her, Sasha realised, and let her sleep in past the dawn. Quite likely some of the men would be back from their first fishing trip soon, having set out before sunrise. Others would be off to North Pier to work at the warehouses, shifting the rich families’ cargo. Another day in Petrodor.
Serrin put something in their tea that woke a person up real fast. She sat on the floor and did her stretches. Then came the exercises, fast sit-ups and push-ups in her underclothes. Then she lifted her chin repeatedly above the crosswise ceiling beam, with relative ease.
“You should do more exercises,” she encouraged Fara, who sat on her bed and arranged little parcels of medicines in small leather pouches, along with other implements Sasha did not recognise, and placed them carefully in a wooden carry box. “Then the boys won't beat you up at training so bad.”
“I do enough,” said Fara. Fara was a quiet girl with long, light brown hair and eyes that never quite met a person's gaze. Her uman was a healer, skilled primarily in the serrin lore of medicines. Her uman was also a woman; and that, in Sasha's estimation, was where the problems began.